A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin

A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin, 2011

Before them a pale lord in ebon finery sat dreaming in a tangled nest of roots, a woven weirwood throne that embraced his withered limbs as a mother does a child.

His body was so skeletal and his clothes so rotted that at first Bran took him for another corpse, a dead man propped up so long that the roots had grown over him, under him, and through him. What skin the corpse lord showed was white, save for a bloody blotch that crept up his neck onto his cheek. His white hair was fine and thin as root hair and long enough to brush against the earthen floor. Roots coiled around his legs like wooden serpents. One burrowed through his breeches into the desiccated flesh of his thigh, to emerge again from his shoulder. A spray of dark red leaves sprouted from his skull, and grey mushrooms spotted his brow. A little skin remained, stretched across his face, tight and hard as white leather, but even that was fraying, and here and there the brown and yellow bone beneath was poking through.

"Are you the three-eyed crow?" Bran heard himself say. A three-eyed crow should have three eyes. He has only one, and that one red. Bran could feel the eye staring at him, shining like a pool of blood in the torchlight. Where his other eye should have been, a thin white root grew from an empty socket, down his cheek, and into his neck.

"A. . . crow?" The pale lord's voice was dry. His lips moved slowly, as if they had forgotten how to form words. "Once, aye. Black of garb and black of blood." The clothes he wore were rotten and faded, spotted with moss and eaten through with worms, but once they had been black. "I have been many things, Bran. Now I am as you see me, and now you will understand why I could not come to you. . . except in dreams. I have watched you for a long time, watched you with a thousand eyes and one. I saw your birth, and that of your lord father before you. I saw your first step, heard your first word, was part of your first dream. I was watching when you fell. And now you are come to me at last, Brandon Stark, though the hour is late."

"I'm here," Bran said, "only I'm broken. Will you. . . will you fix me. . . my legs, I mean?"

"No," said the pale lord. "That is beyond my powers."

Bran's eyes filled with tears. We came such a long way. The chamber echoed to the sound of the black river.

"You will never walk again, Bran," the pale lips promised, "but you will fly."--- (pages 177-178)

For many fans of the Song of Ice and Fire series, A Dance With Dragons represented a crucial moment for the cycle. Dance could either deal with the problems of its predecessor or succumb to the same issues (an overcrowded narrative, missing characters, too many loose ends) that made Feast a disappointment. Personally, I enjoyed Feast despite its failings, but I still hoped that Dance could return the series to the insanely high level of quality that the first three books exhibited. Having just finished the massive volume last night (some time around midnight), I can say that it's an improvement on Feast, but not without some serious missteps and some of the most aggravating cliffhangers that Martin has yet put to paper (and that's saying a lot).

While the Westerosi attempt to unite their shattered kingdom, trouble is brewing in the east and the north. Daenerys Targaryen, exiled dragon queen of Westeros, has settled in the vicious slaving city of Meereen, hoping to reform Slaver's Bay and bring peace to the troubled Ghiscari. Her well-intentioned efforts set off a chain reaction that makes her thousands of enemies, both within and without her city. As war claims the continent of Essos, several westerners make their way to Daenerys, including Tyrion, who fled from King's Landing after murdering his father with a crossbow, and a Dornish prince who wishes to honor a secret marriage pact made between his country and the Targaryens.

In the north, the combined forces of the Freys and the Boltons are trying to subjugate Robb Stark's old allies and force them to accept Tommen as king. Stannis hopes to use the turmoil to his own advantage and wage his war on the Lannisters with the northmen. Behind the Wall, however, another, deadlier foe is gathering, and Jon Snow, newly made Commander of the Night's Watch, must unite his men and their old enemies, the wildlings, if any hope to survive before the onslaught of the Others.

Meanwhile, Arya continues her bizarre training in Braavos, Davos attempts to sway the Manderlys to Stannis's side, Cersei faces up to the consequences of her actions, Ser Barristan struggles with his sense of honor, Jaime encounters someone unexpected in the riverlands, Victarion Greyjoy hunts for Daenerys, Asha is captured by Stannis's forces, Bran undertakes a highly unusual journey beyond the Wall, a broken man named Reek (who was once Theon Greyjoy) tries to find the courage to defy his sadistic master and, most surprising of all, a new contender for the throne of Westeros arises in the East, one long thought dead.

I could go on (and on, and on). There's an insane amount of plot in Dance, all of it labyrinth and entwined. The backstabbing, double crosses, secrets and lies are so thick on the ground that it's hard to remember what anyone's agenda is. It's this kind of plotting that Martin excels at. In fact, he's so good at it that he lets it run away from him, leaving the readers with too many names and too many details. At the same time, the main plot moves forward fairly slowly, with little significant action. Many pieces have been moved into play and rearranged on the board, but we haven't seen much gameplay. To boot, Dance's main narrative runs parallel to Feast, picking up where A Storm of Swords left off, and then continuing on past the end of Feast, a messy chronology that creates a stopping-and-starting feel, particularly to the book's last third.

A certain unevenness is to be expected in a book of this size and scope. Keeping his hundreds of narrative threads straight must be a huge challenge for Martin, and he does a very good job of it, for the most part. What's frustrating is when he seems to continue adding more and more and more plotlines and character arcs when he already has an enormous number to work with. Martin can't seem to stop creating: cultures, races, religions, creatures, cuisine, vehicles, social structures, each one more bizarre and fantastic than the last. Martin is a great writer and a staggeringly talented world-builder, so it's hard to complain about having too much of a good thing. Very few of the new inventions are boring; most of them are fascinating. But particularly in Dance, his seemingly limitless powers of invention are working against him, and preventing him from serving the series' core story as well as he could be.

There are some fabulous character threads in the book, the very best dating back to the first book. Jon's experience as Lord Commander of the Night's Watch is terrific payoff for all of the time we've spent with him on the Wall (and beyond it). I especially like how Martin ensures that Jon's time with the wildlings in Storm remains critical to the storyline, since it seemed as though it might get brushed under the rug. Jon's storyline ends, however, with a truly irritating (albeit nicely done) cliffhanger which we'll probably have to wait another six years to complete.

The book's other MVP is probably The Artist Formerly Known As Theon Greyjoy. Now Reek, a mutilated product of unspeakable torture at the hands of Ramsay Bolton, Theon goes through what could be the darkest plotline in the series so far--which is saying a lot, considering Martin's propensity for the nasty and brutal. The storyline, like Jon's, beautifully pays off Theon's arc in Clash, an interlude that could have been written off as filler. As usual, I have no clue where Martin is taking the character, but Theon/Reek's journey to redemption is the most bleak, haunting, beautifully written storyline in the novel.

I wish the other characters had gotten plots as good. Tyrion, usually the highlight of any scene he's in, is not in top form in Dance. His story is too meandering and seemingly random, and Martin seems to be trying a little too hard to make him entertaining (he still gets all the best lines, of course). Dany, too, has a bit of a hit-or-miss arc. I really like the moral complexity of the choices she's continually faced with, but the ins and outs of Meereenese politics is too far from the series' main action to be really absorbing, The scene where Dany confronts Drogon in the fighting pit definitely stands with her emergence from the fire in Game in terms of awesomeness, though.

Characters like Arya, Jaime, Cersei and Davos get annoyingly scant coverage, with only a chapter or two apiece (Sansa, Samwell and Undead Catelyn don't appear at all and one of my personal favorites, Brienne, only pops up for a mysterious cameo). Melisandre, a cipher since her first appearance, gets a single chapter to herself that, infuriatingly, leaves more questions than answers. And don't even get me started on Bran, whose storyline is undoubtedly the oddest in the entire series. No idea where Martin is taking that one. Due to the novel's unusual structure, the character's storylines are not very evenly distributed, a problem that was probably more or less unavoidable.

Overall, most everything in Dance is at least good. The elements that are frustrating are frustrating not because they're bad, but because they're confusing and seemingly unrelated to the major plotlines of the story. Sure, Martin does a good job describing the personalities of the Yunkish commanders or the political system of Volantis, but these things aren't really necessary, nor are they relevant to the story I'm invested in, which is about Starks and Lannisters and Westeros. Martin always wants to challenge the reader's assumptions about who or what is really the center of the story, a device which is both kind of brilliant and highly irritating.

Speaking of highly irritating, the cliffhangers that end the novel have got to be the most aggravating yet, partly because they're not even that good. Tyrion's is completely random and not all compelling and Dany's is even more random--and comes at the end of a long, draggy chapter that kills the book's pace dead. Jon's is the most exciting, and horrifying, but for the most part the novel just stops abruptly. Even an epilogue with a fairly big twist can't help the fact that most of the momentum that Dance builds up over its 1,000-page length goes nowhere. It's a middle book, a transitory volume that gets the series out of the sticky character-divide that started with Feast.

Middle books are great, too, of course, and Martin's extraordinary gift for storytelling and his fantastically rich, layered prose are very much in evidence. Dance may not be the most satisfying reading experience, but it's certainly as enthralling, thrilling, moving and complex as its predecessors. Hopefully the best is still yet to come. In a pre-book note, Martin promises that the characters "will all be shivering together" in the next volume. Personally, I can't wait to see where he goes next.

NEXT UP: Without Fail, another Jack Reacher novel from Lee Child.

A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin

A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin, 2005

"We are the ironborn, and once we were conquerors. Our writ ran everywhere the sound of the waves was heard. My brother would have you be content with the cold and dismal north, my niece with even less. . . but I shall give you Lannisport. Highgarden. The Arbor. Oldtown. The riverlands and the Reach, the kingswood and the rainwood, Dorne and the marches, the Mountains of the Moon and the Vale of Arryn, Tarth and the Stepstones. I say we take it all! I say, we take Westeros." He glanced at the priest. "All for the greater glory of the Drowned God, to be sure."

For half a heartbeat even Aeron was swept away by the boldness of his words. The priest had dreamed the same dream, when first he'd seen the red comet in the sky. We shall sweep over the green lands with fire and sword, root out the seven gods of the septons and the white trees of the northmen. . .

"Crow's Eye," Asha called, "did you leave your wits at Asshai? If we cannot hold the north--and we cannot--how can we win the whole of the Seven Kingdoms?"

"Why, it has been done before. Did Balon teach his girl so little of the ways of war? Victarion, our brother's daughter has never heard of Aegon the Conqueror, it would seem."

"Aegon?" Victarion has crossed his arms against his armored chest. "What has the Conqueror to do with this?"

"I know as much of war as you do, Crow's Eye," Asha said. "Aegon Targaryen conquered Westeros with dragons."

"And so shall we," Euron Greyjoy promised. "That horn you heard I found amongst the smoking ruins that were Valyria, where no man has dared to walk but me. You heard its call, and felt its power. It is a dragon horn, bound with bands of red gold and Valyrian steel graven with enchantments. The dragonlords old sounded such horns, before the Doom devoured them. With this horn, ironmen, I can bind dragons to my will."

Asha laughed aloud. "A horn to bind goats to your will would be of more use, Crow's Eye. There are no more dragons."

"Again, girl, you are wrong. There are three, and I know where to find them. Surely that is worth a driftwood crown."--- (pages 395-396)

Even before I started reading A Song of Ice and Fire, I knew that the fourth book, A Feast for Crows, was largely seen as a disappointment by fans, inciting frustration and even anger among those who adored Game, Clash and Storm. A few have even described Feast as Martin's "jump the shark" moment. Feast only has half of the usual cast of characters, with such favorites as Jon, Tyrion and Dany relegated to the next installment. As a result, the novel definitely suffers from a much-reduced pace and a notable lack of the kind of direction that the previous books had.

There's no doubt, though, that Feast is, quite literally, a feast for readers. The dynamism of previous installments is missing, but there is world-building and character development galore. Martin reaches into the corners of his world and gives us a more eclectic look at the story, from the perspectives of scheming queens, ironmen, Dornish princesses and wandering knights. Those invested in the tale of the Stark family will be disappointed, but for those who are willing to wade through a certain amount of filler, there's a rich bounty of rewards.

Between the decimation of Stannis's forces on the Blackwater and the (sniff) death of Robb Stark, the war in Westeros seems to be coming to a close. Tommen is king of a scorched and decimated land, overrun with bandits and still struggling to find lasting peace. Westeros is still a powder keg ready to blow, even without outright war.

In this troubled and uncertain new world, Brienne hunts for the Stark girls, Cersei struggles to maintain control of her kingdom (and her sanity), Jaime tries to find a new place for himself, Arya finds a new life in Braavos, Sansa faces constant deception and intrigue in the Eyrie and Samwell leaves the Wall on a clandestine mission, as an explosive power struggle threatens to erupt in Dorne and the ironmen unite to conquer Westeros--and to find a far-off dragon queen.

Feast is an unusual mixture, a bit of a dumping ground for Martin's extraneous characters and plot threads. The three characters who have provided the base for the saga--Jon, Dany and Tyrion--are only referred to or, in Jon's case, seen briefly. It's up to the smaller figures to carry the novel, particularly Cersei and Brienne, who get the most prominent roles.

I was pretty impressed with Cersei's storyline overall (Martin does a great job of making Cersei unbalanced, nasty, childish. . . and just a tiny bit understandable), but it's definitely overlong and a tad galumphing in comparison to the book's other narrative threads. For instance, Arya and Sansa only get a couple of chapters apiece and Samwell, Jaime, the ironmen and the Dornishmen get pretty truncated stories, too.

The pace is slower, no question, the plot less dynamic. What Feast does very well is filling in the missing pieces of the Westeros puzzle, exploring nooks and crannies that we haven't seen in detail before: Braavos, Dorne, Oldtown, the Iron Islands. Martin has a rare gift for creating intricate, interesting cultures, each with its own customs and unique perspective. Feast is like a colorful patchwork quilt of nations, groups, organizations and individuals, each with their own agenda, sometimes obvious, sometimes shadowy. Nobody tells a story like this better than Martin.

There are some truly glorious bits of character development in Feast: Jaime's increasing disillusionment with Cersei, Sam's growing courage and confidence, the contentious relationship between Euron and Victarion Greyjoy, Arys Oakheart's romance with Arianne Martell. Martin's patented mixture of the sweepingly epic with the intimately personal continues to work wonders for him. His writing is, as always, damn good, no matter what he's depicting. It's easy to forget just how good he is because his narrative is so engrossing.

His editor, however, seems to be on break. Martin's struggles with editing the book are practically literary legend by now, and the book definitely shows the labor that went into it. There are too many dropped or inconsequential plotlines and, like A Clash of Kings, way too much name-dropping. It is literally impossible to keep track of everyone's name, house and allegiances without the appendix in the back. I also got a bit weary of Martin's tendency (which is particularly pronounced in Feast) to head off on interludes that seem unconnected to the larger story, such as Brienne's trek to Crackclaw Point or Arianne's long imprisonment in the Sunspear.

George R. R. Martin at his worst is still better than most writers at their best. Feast may be the weakest novel in the series so far, yet it's still terrific, layered with romance and intrigue and war and character growth. It doesn't come close to the dizzying heights of A Storm of Swords, but it's a good book in its own right. Its status as a placeholder in the series definitely contributes to the feeling that it's a prelude to greatness rather than greatness itself.

NEXT UP: Vision in White, by Nora Roberts. Yep, that's right. A romance novel.

A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin

A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin, 2000

Dany shrugged him off. "Viserys would have bought as many Unsullied as he had the coin for. But you once said I was like Rhaegar. . ."

"I remember, Daenerys."

"Your Grace," she corrected. "Prince Rhaegar led free men into battle, not slaves. Whitebeard said he dubbed his squires himself, and made many other knights as well."

"There was no higher honor than to receive your knighthood from the Prince of Dragonstone."

"Tell me, then--when he touched a man on the shoulder with his sword, what did he say? 'Go forth and kill the weak'? Or 'Go forth and defend them'? At the Trident, those brave men Viserys spoke of who died beneath our dragon banners--did they give their lives because they believed in Rhaegar's cause, or because they had been bought and paid for?" Dany turned to Mormont, crossed her arms, and waited for an answer.

"My queen," the big man said slowly, "all you say is true. But Rhaegar lost on the Trident. He lost the battle, he lost the war, he lost his kingdom, and he lost his life. His blood swirled downriver with the rubies from his breastplate, and Robert the Usurper rode over his corpse to steal the Iron Throne. Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died.---(page 330)

I am going to make a concerted effort not to write this review in ALL CAPS and littered with exclamation points and glowing words of praise. I'm going to try to rein myself in and be balanced and reasonable. This will not be easy because A Storm of Swords is SO FREAKING AWESOME IN SO MANY WAYS!!!!!!!!

Ahem. Yes, as I was saying, Storm is--well, it's incredible. It's just an incredible work of writing, a truly staggering novel that made me want to organize a parade for George R. R. Martin. Storm pushed so many of my buttons, and in some combinations that I didn't even know existed. It makes the first two novels in the series look like slow, plodding mammoths. In Storm, plotlines that have lain dormant begin to sizzle, character arcs pay off explosively and the story twists and turns as violently as a roller coaster. Martin's writing has never been better, his characters never more fascinating, infuriating, lovable, despicable, funny, hateful and conflicted. This is the kind of novel where mammoth-riding archers engaging in battle at a seven-hundred foot wall of ice is a lull in the action.

The War of the Five Kings is still going as Storm begins, even after Stannis's crushing defeat at the Blackwater. New Hand of the King Tywin Lannister has engineered a politically advantageous marriage for King Joffrey that will cement an important military alliance, while Stannis licks his wounds on Dragonstone and Robb tries to rectify a potentially disastrous mistake.

Meanwhile, Daenerys begins her conquest of the eastern realms, Davos Seaworth attempts to stop Stannis from trusting Melisandre, Jon finds himself a turncloak spy inside the wildllings' camp, Arya falls in with a mysterious band of outlaws, Tyrion is trapped in an unusual marriage to Sansa, of all people, Bran travels beyond the Wall, Catelyn struggles to keep Robb's campaign afloat and Jaime Lannister goes on a painful journey of self-discovery.

And believe me, this is a seriously truncated summary. So much happens in Storm that it makes the previous two novels in the series look positively sleepy. There's very little set-up here; this baby is all payoff. The rivalries, wars, conflicts and intrigues that have been carefully set in place explode like nukes. Martin's plotting is mind-blowing in its intricacy and internal consistency. He reminds me of J.K. Rowling in his ability to drop in a seemingly irrelevant detail that turns out, a thousand pages later, to be the key to solving some crucial mystery. He has character revelations galore up his sleeve in this installment--some heartbreaking, some jaw-dropping. Nearly every chapter changes the game in some significant way.

One incredible twist (which occurs two-thirds of the way through the novel) is one of the most shocking I've ever encountered, as is the one that occurs on the book's final page. To call it gutsy would be a massive understatement. Martin takes constant risks and 99.9% of them pay off in the end. I can honestly say that I've never read any author who could out-plot Martin.

The characters are progressing amazingly, too. Tyrion? Still awesome. Arya? Still awesome. Jon? Awesomer than ever. The sheer number of compelling characters in the series is staggering; even characters with minuscule roles (Podrick Payne, Tormund Giantsbane, Osha) become fascinating figures in Martin's able hands.

A few characters get boatloads of new development, too, especially Jaime Lannister, who was formerly a one-dimensional villain. Martin expertly shows us Jaime's side of the story and, of course, I was loving him by the end of the book. It's a tribute to the incredible moral complexity of the series that a man who threw a child off a tower with the intent to kill him can become a likable antihero. Jaime's chemistry with Brienne is one of the book's best subplots. Come to think of it, George R. R. Martin does romance surprisingly well: Jon's sweet, sad love affair with Ygritte is a notable highlight in a book jam-packed with them.

One of my other favorites: the gorgeously sad scene near the end where lost, lonely Sansa builds a replica Winterfell in the snow of the Eyrie. Martin knows just exactly how to move his readers; he toys with our emotions like a master puppeteer, giving us just enough decency, hope and goodness to keep us going through the grim, gory and harsh world he's created.

Do I have anything bad to say about Storm? Not really. I did think that Bran's story was a total non-starter in this particular volume, despite the cool revelation that he can possess people as well as animals. This doesn't much bother me, though, because I trust Martin enough to know that he is going somewhere with Bran.

Fiction doesn't get a whole lot better than this. Storm is definitely the best book in an already-amazing series and it's the kind of book that you can climb into and live in for a while, a completely absorbing read with a fantasy world so detailed and complete that you can sometimes forget it's fantasy at all.

And those cliffhangers he leaves us with? Freaking brutal, but still amazing. Tyrion killing Shae and Tywin, Jon being made Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, Dany settling down to rule her "practice kingdom," Arya leaving Westeros and Catelyn BEING ALIVE, as well as completely badass? Now that's how you finish off a book. Magnificent.

NEXT UP: Julia Spencer-Fleming's latest, One Was a Soldier.

A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin

A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin, 1999

Silent, Davos tended to his course. The shore was a snarl of rocks, so he was taking them well out across the bay. He would wait for the tide to turn before coming about. Storm's End dwindled behind them, but the red woman seemed unconcerned. "Are you a good man, Davos Seaworth?" she asked.

Would a good man be doing this? "I am a man," he said. "I am kind to my wife, but I have known other women. I have tried to be a father to my sons, to help make them a place in this world. Aye, I've broken laws, but I've never felt evil until tonight. I would say my parts are mixed, m'lady. Good and bad."

"A grey man," she said. "Neither white nor black, but partaking of both. Is that what you are, Ser Davos?"

"What if I am? It seems to me that most men are grey."

"If half of an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion. A man is good, or he is evil."--- (page 620)

A Game of Thrones was an astonishingly wonderful novel, one of the finest fantasy novels I've ever read. The sequel, A Clash of Kings, had an incredibly tall order ahead of it. The story that the first novel had begun was so incredibly intricate and such an intoxicating mixture of the sweepingly epic and the deeply personal. I honestly wasn't sure if the series could keep up with the incredible amount of momentum that it had built up.

I shouldn't have worried. Clash, like Game, is bowl-you-over good. So sweeping in scope that it makes the first book's perspective look narrow, Clash is a whole lotta novel. There are no less than nine separate character perspectives and even though the book is nearly a thousand pages, there's barely enough space to cram in all the betrayals, battles, politics, assassinations, magic and sex.

The Seven Kingdoms is in complete disarray after the events of Game. Robb Stark has named himself King of the North and is rallying his fellow northmen against King Joffrey, a puppet of the powerful Lannister family. The former king's two brothers Renly and Stannis have also amassed separate armies in dual bids to take the throne. None of these combatants are even aware of Daenerys Targaryen, who is using her three newborn dragons to find military support across the sea.

Meanwhile, Jon Snow accompanies the Night's Watch beyond the Wall in search of a rumored army of wildlings, Catelyn Stark struggles to keep her splintered family safe, Tyrion Lannister braves the complex world of royal politics, Arya goes on the run, Sansa attempts to escape from King's Landing and former Stark ward Theon Greyjoy plots revenge against the Stark family. And that's just the Cliff Notes version, believe me.

The nature of Martin's storytelling unfortunately requires some characters to get slightly less compelling storylines. For instance, in this book, Tyrion and Arya get absolutely fantastic narratives, while characters like Jon and Daenerys get a bit shortchanged. The sheer volume of the storytelling necessitates a slightly choppier flow than in the first novel, which is one of the few small problems that detract from the book's overall effect.

Another of these small problems is the staggering amount of information dumped on the reader. There are quite literally hundreds of characters to remember, dozens of houses and families, some of them long-dead. I'm usually pretty adept at remembering details, but even I was sometimes confused by the intricacies of this family or that group. Martin piles on perhaps a few too many extraneous elements, which wasn't nearly as much of a problem in Game.

The plotting is also a bit of an issue. Martin is very good at suddenly turning everything we thought we knew on its head, but compared to Game, Clash maintains the status quo for most of its length and events move a bit more slowly. This is more a symptom of the series' growing complexity and interconnectivity than anything else, but it did make for some occasional, brief moments of tediousness.

Okay, the rest of this review will be devoted to praise, because Clash is still staggeringly wonderful. Martin really does have the ability to generate nearly unbearable suspense, and then suddenly twist everything so that it's either moving or funny as hell. He wears a lot of hats. He can be gut-wrenchingly brutal or hair-raisingly thrilling, but his true gift is the sharp, subtle little insights he provides into his characters and his refusal to provide the reader with anything simple or one-dimensional.

Despite all of the epic struggles and larger-than-life conflict, I'm starting to see this series as more of a stealthy morality play. Is anyone in the series doing the right thing? Is good and evil something that can be defined? Do good intentions matter in the end? These are questions that are not posed outright, but are slipped in with cunning. What are we to make of these people? Are they heroes to be cheered, villains to be booed, or are they all a bit of both?

I don't know whether I should love or hate everyone in the book, but I do know that Martin has a genius for creating riveting characters. Tyrion, my favorite character from Game, is shooting up my list of all-time favorite literary characters ever (seriously, where does he get his quips?). Arya is also incredible--imagine Scout Finch, but with a sword. The minor characters that lurk around the edges of the story have some real standouts among them as well: Varys, Bronn, Ser Jorah Mormont, Brienne, Shae, Samwell Tarly, Sandor Clegane, Asha, Renly, Littlefinger. Martin is so good at filling out his world with fascinating people.

He also, without a doubt, has the best villains. Cersei is just so utterly poisonous, Stannis so cold, Joffrey so damn annoying, Gregor Clegane so cruel. Theon Greyjoy, a small character in Game also steps up in this volume, and his storyline is one of my favorites. His descent into evil is not punctuated by melodramatic flashes of remorse, but Martin shows us those small flickers of doubt and mercy that elevate him to the status of a three-dimensional character.

Like its predecessor, Clash concludes on a frustrating note because Martin ends literally every storyline with a cliffhanger, although not before giving us the Battle of the Blackwater, the most spectacular sequence in the series so far. This isn't just good fantasy writing, this is excellent war fiction. And the juxtaposition of the furious, pyrotechnic battle on the river with Cersei and Sansa, waiting with a headsman to kill them should that battle go awry? Brilliant.

Clash is, without a doubt, a fantastic novel, exciting and addictive and shocking. It might not be quite as all-around fabulous as Game, but it also has a much harder role to play in the overall scheme of the series. It's not the very beginning, but a lot of the content is cleverly disguised set-up for what's to come.

And if a novel this good is Martin's version of set-up, I can only imagine what his payoff is going to be like.

Must. Not. Order. A Storm of Swords.

NEXT UP: A return to the classics, with Brideshead Revisited.

A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, 1996

Um, wow. Is it too early to call A Game of Thrones my favorite book of 2011?

Seriously. This book absolutely knocked my socks off, in the best possible way. It's the kind of "knocked your socks off" that makes me want to tear into the sequel right here, right now, because I'm not sure how long I can stand being away from Martin's characters and fictional world.

The novel (the first in a multi-book series) takes place in a fictional world that basically recalls England during the Middle Ages. It follows the Stark family as they navigate a dangerous world of politics, murder and war. A long winter is coming and supernatural forces are rallying in the north, even as an epic struggle for the throne begins, with the fragmented Stark family trapped in the middle.

Obviously, this is a gross oversimplification of an enormous story with many interlocking viewpoints, a huge mythology and incredibly complex character motivations. In other words, it's the kind of thing that could be a leaden bore in the wrong hands.

It is not a bore. Game is absolutely dynamic. Even though it is 800 pages long, there is not one chapter or subplot that is simply filler. Martin skips the boring parts and gets into the meat of the story every time. He can make a conversation between old friends as tension-filled as a battle scene. His politics are completely thrilling; it's incredibly fun trying to guess what everyone's agenda is.

Not that it's easy to do. I consider myself difficult to fool, but again and again Martin would completely blindside me with atom-bomb revelations. Some of them are difficult to see coming just because they're so audaciously nasty. The man never flinches from brutality and he makes no apologies for it. His is a world with real consequences, where people can and will die. One huge death late in the book is about as shocking and horrific a fictional demise as any I've ever read.

But there's a huge upside to all of the gloom and gore: it makes the rare scenes of love or tenderness feel earned, both by the reader and the characters.

And the characters. Oh good God, the characters. Have I ever fallen for a fictional person as quickly as I did for Tyrion Lannister? Is there anyone out there who doesn't love Arya Stark or Jon Snow? And how is it that every scene with Littlefinger or Jaime Lannister or Cersei leaves me salivating for more?

Martin clearly has a thing against one-dimensional characters. Every single person in the book--and it's a huge cast--is multi-faceted and strikingly real. People you thought were villains turn out to be heroes and the people you thought were heroes turn out to be as cruel and spiteful as everyone else. Again, this makes those moments of nobility or heroism precious and special.

Seriously, there are some truly twisted sequences in this novel. Scenes like Dany and Drogo's wedding night should be gruesome and cringe-inducing, but instead it's gentle and kind of sweet. On the other hand, Sansa and Joffrey's wholesome romance is nauseating. Martin is a master at using our own assumptions and preconceived ideas against us.

I also love Martin's treatment of the supernatural. In most fantasy universes, magic is right up there, front and center. In Martin's world, spells, monsters and magic stay on the sidelines, present but subtle. When something otherworldly comes on stage, we've had time to look forward to it, and Martin doesn't disappoint. Some of the most effective scenes in the book are supernatural in nature:

Royce's body lay facedown in the snow, one arm outflung. The thick sable cloak had been slashed in a dozen places. Lying dead like that, you saw how young he was. A boy.

He found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the end splintered and twisted like a tree struck by lightning. Will knelt, looked around warily, and snatched it up. The broken sword would be his proof. Gared would know what to make of it, and if not him, then surely that old bear Mormont or Maester Aemon. Would Gared still be waiting with the horses? He had to hurry.

Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him.

His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye.

The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw.

The broken sword fell from nerveless fingers. Will closed his eyes to pray. Long, elegant hands brushed his cheek, then tightened around his throat. They were gloved in the finest moleskin and sticky with blood, yet the touch was icy cold. --- (pages 10-11)

Martin's writing is clean and gloriously crisp. He never falls prey to the bloated exposition or over-description of other fantasy writers (sorry, Robert Jordan). His dialogue is convincingly archaic, but incredibly readable. I love that his emphasis is always on the characters, not on getting us to the next battle scene (although the battle scenes are amazing).

You know that you loved a novel when you have to wrack your brains to come up with anything negative to say about it. I pretty much adored it all-- the characters, the intricate storytelling, the unique structure, the pedal-to-the-metal pacing.

My biggest problem is that Martin sets up the sequel so exquisitely. We're left with six or seven delicious cliffhangers and a war raging. It's a testament to the novel's excellence that it feels absolutely packed with incident, yet the series' true conflict is only just beginning.

Thanks a lot, George. You've probably spoiled my next few reading experiences because I'll be pining after A Clash of Kings the whole time. There aren't a lot of authors who could spin a story as entirely bewitching as A Game of Thrones. The novel pushes all the buttons. It is tremendously exciting, as finely-plotted as a mystery, as poignant a human drama as any. It's even highly funny, usually courtesy of Tyrion or Littlefinger. It's a complete package and it's only the first one in the series, for God's sake.

I can't wait for Round Two. But if Tyrion gets killed, I'm coming after George R. R. Martin.

NEXT UP: The very first nonfiction book that I'll review on this blog: Michael Caine's new memoir The Elephant to Hollywood.